


Shatter

by MakeSadieStop



Series: Nothing Hurts [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Gaara why must you do this to yourself, He just wants to love you gfdi, Heavy Angst, I hate myself and I hate what I've done, INTENSE AUTHOR SOBBING, M/M, Rough Kissing, So much angst, Suicide Attempt, Suicide contemplation, somebody kill me please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 02:18:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11431098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakeSadieStop/pseuds/MakeSadieStop
Summary: There's trouble in Konoha, but Naruto won't leave him. Gaara knows what he has to do.Angst in the beginning, angst in the middle, angst in the end. Just heavy angst throughout, accompanied by author's tears.





	Shatter

**Author's Note:**

> Rating/archive warning is for suicide/self-harm references and dark mental imagery.
> 
> I'M SO SORRY.

Gaara needs to know why the hurt won't _stop_.

It isn’t Naruto’s fault. Naruto didn’t do any of this. Naruto wants to stop this, and that makes this so much worse.

“I don’t want to go, Gaara.”

“Don’t say that.” Naruto will not make him beg. Gaara clenches his jaw to crush the ‘please’ before it can exist.

“Don’t say _what_? Which word is the problem? _Gaara_?”

If he has to hear his name one more time tonight, Gaara will tear off his own ears. Or he’ll bury a single grain of sand in each eardrum and wait for infection to set in. He isn’t sure which is most important: that it be sudden, or that he feel pain.

“I _have_ _to_ say your name. Because I’m talking to Gaara, Gaara of the Desert, _Gaara_ _of_ _me_. No other name, no other _title_ , just _you_.”

That’s three more in one breath. Gaara is pinching at his earlobes—he’ll see if he has the strength for this first.

Does Naruto know what he’s doing? Or is he upset at being ignored, like always? Because there are _his hands_ , clenched in a death grip, fingers long enough to wrap all the way around, meeting in relentless twin bracelets that will burn through Gaara’s bones.

The thoughts echo and bounce through Gaara’s skull until the reason for his creeping sense of déjà vu _strikes_ him, hard enough to force out a cry.

“No, no, Gaara, tell me I didn’t hurt you—”

Gaara can’t bear to lie, but he can’t bear the horror on Naruto’s face, either.

“Not my hands.”

And in his face, it hits Naruto, too. That this grip is how it started, as Gaara is trying to make it end.

They are kissing. Blood and tears from both. Gaara cannot tell from taste whose is whose.

Moans and whimpers and _sobs_ from both. It doesn’t matter whose is whose.

It has to stop, or Gaara has to die. The hands that have risen to cradle his head, tipping his chin, bracing his neck—they have not yet moved to snap it, and Gaara will never forgive him for being so cruel.

“Stop.” Naruto will not make him beg. Naruto can make him bleed, Naruto can make him scream, Naruto can make his whole existence cry for mercy, but Gaara _will not_ beg.

“Gaara . . . Gaara, what did I ever—”

“You never. Only me.”

“Then—”

“I don’t know how to share you.”

“So keep me.”

“You can’t be kept.”

“I’ll run away.”

“From all you wanted?”

“Not all.”

“All that matters.”

“You matter.”

The kiss has been broken for long enough that Gaara isn’t bleeding. He tears into his own lip this time, to fix that. Reaches up and rips the scab away.

“Don’t. You’ll hurt—”

“I’m already hurt.”

“You’ll hurt me.”

That’s the one thing Gaara can’t do. Naruto catches his hand as it drops.

“Just talk to me. Tell me why we can’t have this.”

“You tell me why we can. Where will we live?”

“We’ll visit, and someday, when we retire—”

“Between visits? Until then?”

“I’ll think of you.”

“And while you’re thinking, who will think of Konoha?”

“Shikamaru.”

“That’s not his job.”

“Well, maybe—”

“If you tell me you’ll quit for me, I can’t.”

“Can’t?”            

“Uzumaki Naruto’s dream is to be Hokage. He gave his word to himself and the world, and he never goes back on his word.”

Silence, except for those eyes.

“The day you go back is the day you stop being him.”

Laughter, except for those tears.

“So you’re saying you can’t love me if I’m not the shinobi you fell in love with? Is that it?”

“What is love?” His life’s question is the answer that will hurt the least.

“You love me.”

Gaara would cover his ears. But Naruto would take his hands again, and he would cry again, and he really would die.

“And I love Sand. And you love Leaf. And we both love the Alliance.”

“You have so much love in you.”

“Someday, there won’t be enough.”

“Not with you.”

“Someday, loving you and loving Suna won’t be the same.”

“Not today.”

“It would hurt more tomorrow.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“Don’t make me beg.”

Naruto doesn’t. Gaara is released. They’re free to stand, only they don’t.

Gaara curls himself into the tightest shell he could make without sand.

Naruto won’t give up.

“Why now? Leaf just has this one stupid thing.”

“You’re always going to have one stupid thing. And another, and another, until it’s everybody’s stupid thing, and it’s not stupid at all, and we’re at war.”

“But the Alliance—”

“The Alliance is a love affair. We know how long those last.”

Naruto is going to reach for him—cradle him, convince him he’s wrong, scream at him if he has to.

Gaara can’t.

***

He is grateful for sand. It envelops him, darkness, stale breath, the faintest scent of blood, and for a moment he has peace.

He has changed, but he hasn’t. His impulse, Mother’s impulse, the sand’s impulse, was to defend. Naruto isn’t hurt. The chakra outside is pulsating with that same strength of ten beasts Gaara has known for years.

But the sand still smells of blood.

He will suffocate himself, then, in this gritty air that stinks of iron. And Naruto will go.

He squeezes his eyes shut against the squeeze in his lungs. Yet the pang under his ribcage is worse than death.

There is a hand resting on his dome. So tenderly, not the slightest fear of being crushed. Persistent. Far more persistent than Gaara’s faltering heartbeat.

Gaara gives up on dying. Mother resolves that he will live. The sand parts, and there he is, and sanctuary is gone.

Pitch black, but the pores let the air filter in. Oxygen smells of blood and tastes of _him_.

“Breathe.” Naruto is breath. He has no choice.

“Smell.” It is an order. Naruto will not make him beg.

“It’s . . .” Naruto can’t hide the skip in his pulse-beat as his veins recognize their own scent—not when he’s already pulled Gaara to his chest, forced him by the hair into his neck. There can be no separation when they have already interlocked.

“Do you understand? Never yours. I can’t let it be yours.”

“It wouldn’t—”

“It could. And I can’t.”

“You said. The Alliance is already a love affair. Ours would—”

“Die with all the rest, and take you with it. I can’t.”

Naruto’s embrace will crush and burn him.

“Dammit, Gaara, I love—”

“Don’t. Please.”

Gaara is grateful for sand. He can’t watch Uzumaki Naruto as he breaks.

Tear tracks, bite marks, handprints, footsteps. Sand cascades and counts each one. Gaara will have to lie down on this floor and just die.

“Go home.”

Too far to argue.

“Mercy.”

Gaara can hear his own heartbeat beg.

Oxygen smells of death, but will not give it.

Everything hurts.


End file.
